Surely one of the hardest things about politics today for conservatives is the way in which the Left destroys anyone who stands in its way. President Bush has bungled things, but to question the decency and the sincerity of the man, the tactic of the Left, is obscene.

So, as Republican candidates line up, they all know that they will be spat upon, reviled, demonized and defamed the first time that their campaign moves – even if the first campaign movement is to ask that we all love each other as God intended.

That, doubtless, is part of the reason that Fred Thompson has not yet announced his candidacy. He can take it – Thompson is the toughest guy out there, including Hillary – but Thompson also has a wife and two young children who he dearly loves.

As a great American said in 1863 "Now we are engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated can long endure." Lincoln was talking about that horrible and bloody war fought by Republicans against Democrats for the soul of America. Was the Declaration of Independence, the document to which Lincoln was referring in the Gettysburg Address, dead? Or would the "brave men who fought and died" at Gettysburg not have died in vain?

Now we are, indeed, involved in a great civil war. There are Democrats who scoff at American exceptionalism. There are Democrats doing all in their power to keep the Commander-in-Chief from winning this civil war. There are despots abroad who are openly siding with those Democrats, nice men like Assad, the Torturer-in-Chief of Syria.

As with the birthing of our nation, when the Whigs (the patriots) had to fight the Tories as much as the British and the Hessians, everyone is on the line. America, then, also, was divided. The three great crises of America – our Revolutionary War, our Civil war, and our present civil war – required great men to get us through to victory.

Fred Thompson, who won by a landslide Sean Hannity's online poll has easily outpaced every Republican on the Pajamas Media online poll, zooming far past Rudy Giuliani (who had been leading.) These unscientific polls do measure one thing well: the dramatic intensity of support for Fred Thomspon among Republicans, the genuine enthusiasm unmatched, as I noted in my January article when I dubbed him "The Next Reagan," since Reagan.

But hot would it get for Thompson if he ran? Maybe not that hot. Can you imagine Alec Baldwin, who starred with Thompson in The Hunt for Red October, calling Fred Thompson a "fascist"? Would Nick Nolte or Jessica Lange, who starred with Thompson in Cape Fear call him a monster? What would Kevin Costner, who starred with Thompson in No Way Out say? Thompson has starred in Hollywood films for twenty years and virtually everyone who personally knows Thompson likes and respects him. While some Hollywood types would work to defeat any conservative Republican, Thompson would be the hardest, personally and professionally, for most of Hollywood to attack.

Would Feminists insult a man identified in the minds of millions of liberal women as "Arthur Branch," the no-nonsense prosecutor who puts rapists, child molesters and wife batterers in prison? Would AARP taunt the man destined to replace Paul Harvey and who demonstrates how life begins at sixty? Thompson creates huge problems for the hate machines of the Left.

But does Fred Thompson have the "fire in his belly" to become president. I think so. Earlier in this article, I spoke of Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address. Democrats in the North, during the Civil War, organized riots against the draft. But there were some Americans – Americans outside the Union – who were not drafted at all. Indeed, they could not be drafted. They volunteered. They were known, and they are still known today as the "Tennessee Volunteers," soldiers from a Confederate state who risked their lives to save the Union.

Is Fred Thompson a "Tennessee Volunteer"? Will he join – will he lead – the armies who must prevail in the great civil war that our nation is fighting this very hour? Everything in his life to this point says "Yes, I am a Tennessee Volunteer." There is another Tennessean who was reluctant to fight, but when he fought, he fought like a tiger: Alvin York, whose deadeye accuracy saved lives and shortened the First World War.

Bruce Walker has been a published author in print and in electronic media since 1990. He is a contributing editor to Enter Stage Right and a regular contributor to Conservative Truth, American Daily, Intellectual Conservative, Web Commentary, NewsByUs and Men's News Daily. His first book, Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie by Outskirts Press was published in January 2006.

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